


ad libitum

by minthepsychic



Category: 19th Century CE RPF, The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Absolutely Unbetaed, F/M, Past Sophia Cracroft/Francis Crozier, Plot What Plot/Porn Without Plot, a bit purple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-09
Updated: 2021-02-09
Packaged: 2021-03-15 02:46:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,180
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29306727
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/minthepsychic/pseuds/minthepsychic
Summary: An adventurous interlude during one of Lady Franklin's expedition-planning dinners
Relationships: Sophia Cracroft/John Rae
Collections: The Terror Rarepair Week 2021





	ad libitum

**Author's Note:**

> I decided to not do any research because I did not want to get sidetracked! Barely read through because I didn't want to lose my nerve to post!  
> Apologies to the actual people I'm writing porny RPF about.  
> (Warnings for some moments of a character idealizing upper class white womanhood.)

"Did Ross tell you?" She stormed across the library like a white squall across a northern bay, lovely in her viciousness.

"Miss Cracroft?"

"You've not stopped asking questions about the man all evening. Did Ross tell you about me and Francis?"

"He said you broke his heart - Captain Crozier's heart."

"Bloody bastard." Her face was molded into a fixed sneer, and she turned around to pace back towards the fireplace on the opposite side of the room. She was all motion, one continuous sweep, from the pinned-up jumble of curls at the back of her head to the hem of her skirts. He was not entirely sure that he had ever in his life before met such a glorious and genteel woman. "I told him, right from the start, that I didn't want to be a sailor's wife. I wouldn't sit at home while he followed Ross to the ends of the earth."

She turned back to him, and John Rae found himself somewhat dumbstruck by her fierceness. "Which side are you on? You're all on one side or the other - either Francis ran off to the Arctic to be rid of the heartless bitch who wouldn't have him, or I'm tirelessly organizing searches so I may finally marry my long-lost love."

"Sir James-"

"Oh, bugger Ross - I know what he thinks. But even if Francis walked through that door right now fresh from a knighting he couldn't have me. I'm my own woman and I'll do what I like."

She rather flew at him, but he weathered the charge with good grace as she got her hands into his hair and pulled his head down low enough for her to reach up and kiss him.

His hands were solid gripping her waist by the time she let him free, both of them breathless. There was one blonde curl loose from her hair, delicate against her forehead, a lovely rumpled thing that he had managed to shake loose. Her dress was very fine - undoubtedly the finest cloth he had touched in ages, since he had danced with the chief factor's wife at Christmas years ago.

"Lady Franklin -"

"Richardson will keep my aunt distracted," she said, before she kissed him again.

She urged him down onto the settee and undid his cravat - he would never manage to redo the ridiculous starched monstrosity the hotel's footman had managed to tie it into, but that was a worry for later. Now there was just a woman kissing him, unfastening his shirt buttons.

He followed her mouth back with his when she leant away, but she pushed him back down, ran warm hands down his chest, curled them through the hair there. "Oh, that's lovely," she said, nearly petting him. He realized she was sitting on his thigh - she was wearing half a dozen petticoats, probably.

"Can I?" he asked, and started trying to disentangle her legs from her skirts.

"Yes." She sat up on her knees and he finally got a handful of her leg and pushed her skirts out of the way and now he was the over-clothed one. He stroked at the edge of her stocking - thick and warm for the season, and she shuddered and kissed him again, and pressed her whole body closer to him. His hand slid against her thigh, closer, and she huffed into his mouth as he slid his fingers along her and then dipped one in.

He felt obsessed, disordered, hemmed in by the moment as he sought out the soft parts of her - she clenched around his fingers and he felt mad with it. She got a hand in his buttons and pulled his cock out, mapped it for herself. He knocked his head back against the wooden spine of the settee and then she was on him, he was in her, and he was free to move again, pushing her back against the armrest and driving into her.

"Yes," she said again, breathed it into his mouth. She was grinning, a great tumble of blonde hair about her face, one hand down between them working at herself until she clenched again and came around him. He pulled her knee up, thrust into her hander, felt her clutch about his shoulders as he started to lose control. It hurt near physically to pull back from her, but there was her lovely soft thigh to press himself against as he frigged himself off. Her skirt was still pushed above her waist, and he sat on his heels a moment, her still on display, his spend a sticky puddle next to the join of her thighs.

She broke the moment, wiped her thigh off with a handful of petticoat, sat up, and kissed him. It was a lighter, sweeter thing, need all vanished and a little awkwardness let in where it had been. He didn't know what to do with his hands anymore, not until he realized all his clothes were still undone and started setting them to rights.

"Miss Cracroft-"

She laughed. "Sophie, please."

"Sophie." He kissed her, but she pulled away too soon for his liking.

"I won't marry you either. You're off to the arctic again as soon as you can manage it." She went and started examining her hair in the mirror above the mantelpiece.

"I am. There's a great deal more coastline to search for them."

"It would be a great comfort to my aunt if you find them."

He had thought to kiss her again, but now she turned away from the mirror with her hair perfectly in place and she was a very far away creature now, absolutely unattainable.

"I've some hope that my next expedition will not be needed - that the ships still out will bring word this fall."

"I'm sure that would be a comfort to everyone." She stepped towards him and tried to fix his cravat, but it was smashed and hopeless and she could only tie it into something resembling gentility.

"Sophie, let me apologise for earlier. You and Captain Crozier - I took Sir James's word as the whole story. I didn't think -"

She stopped him, smoothed the line of his jacket back into place. "Don't, it doesn't matter. I know what Ross thinks of me. And you were right to ask me about Francis - I know him as well as anyone in England. I know him better than Ross does, certainly." She smirked a little, paused with a hand on his arm, and there was much to be read in that smirk. "Well, maybe I do."

"Then I am sorry to have brought the whole great mess of it back to you. It seems as if there are ... well, it all seems a bit of a tangle. To me, at least."

"You're not wrong. It is a tangle, one I doubt I'll ever be shot of. There's nothing you or I can do to change that." She smiled at him again, a fleeting, melancholy thing. "We can only go back down the hall, and discover what arctic fish Richardson is telling my aunt about."

**Author's Note:**

> Title is taken from Rae's autobiography.  
> Is character-from-the-show/real-person-not-in-the-show a rarepair? I'll let the mods decide.


End file.
